For five minutes the class, mostly baby boomers whose own musical tastes run to Little Richard and the Beatles, watched a YouTube clip of Marley performing his hit song "Exodus" at a 1979 concert in Santa Barbara. Pounding drums and squealing horns rocked the library.

Bob Marley was not Jewish. But "Exodus," his anthem promising freedom to oppressed people everywhere, was an excellent way to introduce modern-day Jews to the timeless message of Passover, Kort said.

Excellent and, in an era when fewer Jews than ever remain connected to their faith, increasingly necessary.

Passover is one of the major Jewish holidays. It commemorates Jews' liberation from slavery in Egypt as recounted in the biblical book of Exodus.

Jews celebrate Passover by attending a Seder, a special dinner featuring foods reminiscent of the Israelites' tribulations and a retelling of the Exodus story.

The holiday is considered essential for passing along Jewish traditions to younger generations. Kids are encouraged to ask questions during dinner and to become experts in one of Judaism's foundational stories.

Which is why it worries Kort and other rabbis that many Jews no longer bother to hold Seders or to observe the holiday.

"Everyone is balancing really busy lives," Kort said. And many Jews simply no longer know how to host a Seder.

"There is still a sense of nervousness in the Jewish community because (people feel) 'I should know more about this because it's part of my tradition,'" Kort said.

Hence Bob Marley at the Passover preparation class.

Kort said ancient Jewish texts, with their complicated Hebrew and centuries of rabbinical interpretation, can be intimidating. "But (people) know how to talk about music," she said.

Kort's Wednesday evening class, called "Midrash through Music" ("midrash" is a Hebrew term connoting a particular style of biblical interpretation), used Marley's "Exodus" and an opera by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg to show how Passover themes of liberation and discovering Jewish identity resonate in pop culture.

The students seemed to get it. After listening to Marley, they talked at first about their own musical loves: Sinatra, jazz, '50s rock 'n' roll.

Then the questions started. Does God lead people to liberation, or does the liberating impulse come from within? Why can't it be both?

Temple Beth El member Jess Greer, the class's lone classical music lover, observed that Schoenberg, who fled Austria when the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, brought his despair into his dissonant music.

That dovetailed with Kort's overarching lesson: that Passover is ultimately a personal holiday. Jews are commanded to reflect on their own Egypts, the forces holding them or their communities in bondage, she said.

"In Bob Marley's 'Exodus' there's a great line: 'Open your eyes and look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?'" Kort said.

"It's not about God recognizing that people are struggling, but that his people needed to look within to recognize their situation that they didn't want to stay in."

Seven people attended Kort's class, out of a total Temple Beth El membership of 650 families.

Kort said she was happy with the turnout; at one point she feared as few as two people would show up. And she said she knew many families find it impossible to attend synagogue events on a school night.

Still, she and other rabbis said it remains a challenge connecting Jews to their faith in Orange County, where estimates number the Jewish population at about 100,000.

Jews in the Western U.S., including California, are the least likely of all American Jews to belong to a synagogue or to observe Jewish holidays such as Passover, according to the National Jewish Population Survey, a study conducted in 2001 by several national Jewish organizations.

Outside the city of Los Angeles, home to the nation's second-largest Jewish community after New York, Western Jews tend to live in far-flung suburbs without dense concentrations of other Jews and Jewish institutions.

"People are torn in so many different directions with different communities," said Heidi Cohen, rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom in Santa Ana. "They're attached to ... school communities, sports communities, religious and work communities."

Especially in households with two working parents, no one has time anymore to stage a traditional Seder, Cohen said. A "grandparents' Seder," as Cohen termed it, typically featured numerous courses, fine china and cooking utensils scoured to exacting kosher specifications.

Like many synagogues, both Temple Beth Sholom and Temple Beth El stage Seders for families too harried to prepare their own.

Cohen said she livens up her synagogue's Seder with singing and games. "We're not getting the soup until you sing nice and loud," she warns.

Kort, who is 32, said her use of Bob Marley as a segue to Passover was inspired by her own love of reggae. Though she once considered training as a classical oboist, she's now a devoted fan of Groundation, a world-touring jazz/funk/reggae combo from Sonoma County.

"Bob Marley is the tip of the iceberg of what I listen to," she said.

At the same time, "I think Bob Marley is pretty universal. ... Rabbis view the whole world through this lens. Everything I come in contact with, I'm looking at it through Jewish goggles."